In ancient Egyptian art, the Set animal, or sha, is the totemic animal of the god Set. Because Set was identified with the Greek Typhon, the animal is also commonly known as the Typhonian animal or Typhonic beast.
Unlike other animals, the Set animal is not easily identifiable in the modern animal world. Today, there is a general agreement among Egyptologists that it was never a real creature and existed only in ancient Egyptian imagination. In recent years, there have been many attempts by zoologists to find the Set animal in nature. While whether or not the animal existed is currently unknown, it had much significance for the Egyptians. The Set animal is one of the most frequently demonstrated animal determinatives
The Set-animal, Gardiner E20, E21, is one of the portrayals of the god Set. The other common hieroglyph used to represent Set is a seated god with the head of the Set animal, Gardiner C7.
The linguistic use of these hieroglyphs in the Egyptian language is as the determinative for words portraying "items with chaos", example words related to "suffering, violence, perturbation", and also for "violent storms" of the atmosphere, a "tempest".
According to Egyptologist Richard H. Wilkinson, the first known use of the Set animal was upon the Scorpion Macehead of Scorpion II of Naqada III. It was soon thereafter portrayed mounted upon the serekhs of Seth-Peribsen and Khasekhemwy.
According to some scientists, the Set animal hieroglyph does not actually represent a living animal. It’s currently not possible to determine from what living creature the hieroglyph derived. Some Egyptian texts suggest that Set took the form of dangerous animal, such as a bull or crocodile.